Vehicle design and manufacture typically includes an iterative development process to refine vehicle design parameters with each successive design. Various techniques are employed in the development of a new vehicle, including the building and testing of pilot vehicles. A pilot vehicle is usually a limited manufacturing run of a reasonably mature or even pre-production vehicle design. The pilot vehicle is frequently field tested in order to further refine the final production vehicle prior to large scale manufacture. However, present vehicle manufacturing technologies also allow for the ongoing refinement of production vehicles through iterative development since automated manufacturing facilities operating just-in-time assembly processes typically do not require major retooling or down-time to accommodate design changes.
Field testing of a pilot or production vehicle typically involves operating the vehicle in a simulated or real-world driving environment, and collecting various vehicle system test and diagnostic data for later review and analysis. In a pilot vehicle, raw vehicle testing data is typically collected and stored in a field data collection apparatus while the vehicle is in operation. A diagnostic system is later plugged into the field data collection apparatus to download the raw testing data after the completion of the vehicle field testing. Several vehicle systems may be monitored during a vehicle field test, with the subsequent data stored to the data collection apparatus. However, the collected system data is limited to the data stored during the field operation, and the data is not available in real-time to a diagnostic system. For vehicle field tests performed with this system, a staff is required to run the field test, and to retrieve the test data from the collection apparatus. Each test vehicle must be individually downloaded of test data by a staff member plugging the data collection apparatus into a diagnostic system or a secondary data storage medium. It is therefore impractical to collect data from more than a nominal number of vehicles of a particular model during a fixed duration field test exercise. Additionally, while it is possible to integrate limited data collection components into a production vehicle, the test data may only be collected from a production vehicle each time the vehicle visits a facility where the test data may be downloaded; for example, an auto dealership. Furthermore, production vehicles having integrated data collection components will generally be limited in storage and processing power due to increased costs of providing the data collection components, and therefore the collection components may not have enough capacity to collect data for a meaningful period between downloads, or may experience a data overflow prior to collecting statistically useful data. Iterative vehicle design enhancement is then hindered by the inability to collect statistically relevant quantities of test data from a large number of vehicles of a selected model. The inability to monitor collected data in real-time, or on production vehicles further prevents an interactive design process across a large sample group.
It would be desirable therefore to provide a method and system for interactive vehicle design and manufacture that overcomes these and other disadvantages.